Australian miners now have access to previously out-of-reach orebodies thanks to autonomous mapping from Emesent.
Getting an accurate picture of an underground orebody’s geometry and volume is critical, especially when post-blast access to voids is often restricted, with hazardous conditions making it challenging to obtain accurate and comprehensive data from traditional mapping methods.
As Australian miners have been driven deeper underground in search of higher quality ores, they have had to strike a balance between the safety of personnel mapping and efficiently collecting critical information.
Many believe remote controlled or autonomous technology is the answer. Emesent co-founder and chief strategy officer Stefan Hrabar is one of them.
“The future of mining with autonomy will see us get to fully zero-entry operations, preventing personnel from having to go underground at all,” Hrabar told Mining.
“The benefits are endless – workers are kept out of harm’s way and there is a huge step change in greenhouse emissions because you don’t have to ventilate and cool the mine as much because there’s nobody underground.
“You can also chase orebodies that are otherwise impossible in very challenging conditions if they’re deep underground or it’s hot, or anywhere it just wouldn’t be feasible today.”
Emesent is known for its Hovermap, a simultaneous location and mapping (SLAM)-based light detection and ranging (LiDAR) scanning technology.
Quickly attached to a drone, Hovermap can enter GPS-denied environments to enable safe, remote data capture in complex and hazardous areas.
Significantly reducing surveying time, Hovermap captures high-resolution 3D models, known as digital twins, within minutes, while enabling volume calculations, geological assessments and reconciliation.
Unlike traditional scanning methods, Hovermap can operate beyond line-of-sight and adapt to complex stope geometries, ensuring comprehensive coverage. Hovermap runs software called Emesent Cortex that is capable of taking all this information and developing and executing a plan to access a certain area.
“It’s usually doing this many times a second, updating its plan if new information is uncovered,” Hrabar said.
“As it’s building out that map, it might see a new obstacle that wasn’t visible before and then it would modify its plan to get to the goal.”
Emesent co-founder and chief technical officer Farid Kendoul said this rapid data capture and enaction solution allows for safe, confident and stress-free scanning, while minimising disruption to production, even in the most challenging of environments.
“Most mining and other big companies have autonomation on their roadmaps in order to improve productivity, safety and reduce costs,” Kendoul told Mining.
“Our autonomy can evolve in many directions, and we are currently working with relevant stakeholders to define the strategy and develop the next big thing for our autonomy capabilities.”
Hovermap enables the comprehensive mapping of hard-to-reach or previously inaccessible areas, even in heavy dust and high humidity. Users can execute entire missions – from take-off to landing – using only a tablet from a safe distance, significantly reducing risk while live-streaming the point cloud in real-time via Emesent’s Commander app.
With Hovermap’s onboard processing, Commander can streamline outputs to deliver users instant insights, optimising data for rapid network transfer and ease of manipulation for further analysis in third-party tools.
“It makes the greatest sense to use autonomy where environments are dangerous,” Hrabar said. “You don’t want to send people in anywhere when you’re going beyond line of sight, beyond communication range.”
Hrabar said Emesent has been deploying Hovermap in real-world environments for hundreds of clients, building up thousands of hours of use.
“This means our system is very robust, and we’ve dealt with so many edge cases which have helped us to improve the technology,” he said. “This allows Emesent Autonomy to handle really diverse and challenging environments and conditions.”
Hrabar and Kendoul agree that every worker on site, no matter their technical background, can operate Emesent’s autonomous systems with ease.
“We often train people that have never flown a drone before,” Hrabar said. “They used to be driving trucks underground or loading explosives, and within a day or two they were operating Hovermap underground.”
And it’s not just drones.
The company also has machine-mountable and ground robot evolutions of Emesent Autonomy that are answering the call of miners who are after dynamic solutions.
Emesent is dedicated to meeting the industry’s hunger for digital twins with autonomous data capture.
“We have done a lot of work to adapt what we’ve achieved,” Hrabar said. “Our vision is to be world leaders in autonomous digitalisation and enable the autonomous mines of the future.”
